Debate: Open Science

Administrator

Administrator
Staff member
Resolved: Open Practices Make Science Better

Rick Anderson
(Moderator)
♦ University Librarian at Brigham Young University
♦ Member of the 2023 Researcher to Reader Advisory Board
Steven Heffner
♦ Managing Director, Publications at the IEEE
Catriona MacCallum
♦ Director of Open Science at Hindawi Publishing
Dr Malvika Sharan
♦ Senior Researcher, Open Research at The Alan Turing Institute
Dr Karin Wulf
♦ Director and Librarian at the John Carter Brown Library
♦ Professor of History at Brown University
 
The R2R Debate includes structured 'arguments' for and against a formal and carefully-worded proposition. It is not intended to generate conflict or be polarising, but to ensure that a potentially contentious issue is discussed in a structured and disciplined way. The format is loosely based on the debates held at the Oxford Union.
  1. The audience is polled to determine how many attendees favour the proposition and how many oppose it, before the debate has started.
  2. One member of each team presents a pre-prepared ten-minute opening statement.
  3. Another member of each team presents a three-minute response to the other team’s opening statement.
  4. We open the floor to questions and comments from the online and physical Conference participants.
  5. The audience is polled again, and whichever team has moved the most votes toward their position is declared the winner.
 
Past R2R Debates have been very popular during the Conference and subsequently. Our 2019 debate about Sci-Hub has had over 6,000 views on YouTube.
 
Below is a lightly curated copy of some points raised in the text chat during the session:

Tasha Mellins-Cohen​
Q: If not open what?​
Bernie Folan​
Nice Tasha​
Mark Carden​
What does the history of science tell us? How open were Newton or Tesla or Edison?​
Mark Carden​
Does closed give us speed but [open] give us quality?​
Alison Mudditt​
Who gets to define 'quality'​
Ellie Key​
Mark speed and quality are not mutually exclusive nor intrinsically connected to openness​
Mithu Lucraft​
Funders were referenced as driving the change towards open but the slow shift suggests there's cultural change needed to showcase the gains from openness what is needed to help that culture shift?​
Phil Jones​
What about publicly funded research? Should this not be communicated openly?​
Zoe Wake Hyde​
There would be more money there if it wasn't extracted out as huge profits...​
Jo Appleford-Cook​
Q: are the panelists advocating actively pulling back on current sharing practices? Or just a halt to pushing further ahead?​
Mithu Lucraft​
Ellie is it just mistrust? I think it's more broadly about community norms - it's effort to share your data or code it's often done as an after thought when the researcher's already moving on - it needs to be embedded practice but it's not the norm to think like that yet - so that's what I mean by culture shift​
Ellie Key​
Mithu I think that's a lack of appreciation of the value of sharing data and code. Need to educate about why it's important and bring it much further forward in their research thinking and planning​
Arend​
"I used to believe the "" there is enough money in the system"" argument before I worked in the Middle East and China​
Ed Gerstner​
Retractions [aren't] restricted by papers having been paid for​
Arend​
...and they are part of scholarly communication!​
Robyn Mugridge​
If we take too much time to pause and discuss best OA practices we risk grounding progress to a halt...​
Bernie Folan​
Comment not question. This discussion highlighting what works and what doesn't (e.g. anonymous peer review) is useful for finding fixes. I would like to hear all the other areas that need improvement on the way to equitable participatory open scholarship/science.​
Mark Carden​
We have had 15 years of OA chaos! Maybe a 5-year pause for thought starting 15 years ago would have been better!​
Tasha Mellins-Cohen​
I don't think it's chaos so much as constructive disruption​
Zoe Wake Hyde​
Agreed Tasha!​
Mithu Lucraft​
Bernie I think it's a separate panel looking at what is holding researchers back maybe?​
Mithu Lucraft​
Bernie there's been some excellent market research in this area looking at what researchers do/don't want to be transparent or share and why​
Mathew Willmott​
"I've heard a couple times reference to the current system being an ideal alignment of incentives or that it ""functions"" - from the librarian perspective I'm not sure I agree with that (neither on business model incentives aligning - which is where the serials crisis came from - nor from the ability to include underfunded researchers in the scholarly communications process)"​
Mathew Willmott​
(assuming that the current system as referred by the panelists = the subscription system)​
 
Vote before the debate
In favour of the proposition: 87%
Against the proposition: 13%

1677496881562.png
Opening statement in favour of the proposition: Dr Malvika Sharan
Opening statement against the proposition: Steven Heffner
Response in favour of the proposition: Catriona MacCallum
Response against the proposition: Dr Karin Wulf

Vote after the debate

In favour of the proposition: 69%
Against the proposition: 31%

1677497187096.png
 
The Debate was one of the top-rated plenary sessions at R2R 2023.

The session scored an average of 3.5 out of 4, with 86% positive responses, based on 44 participant responses. This is a really excellent result; to put the score in context, in recent previous years, the averages for all plenaries has been around 3.3 out of 4, with a range from 2.9 to 3.6.

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Some comments received are below:
  • Like the debate format.
  • The debates are always good and eye-opening.
  • Excellent speakers who didn't shy away from disagreeing with one another.
  • Always fun and informative!
  • Debate always good.
  • Best debate in ages!
  • Fantastic speakers, well compered.
 
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